Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, USA): from PICC (A Poet in Center City) #39

“Ingres and David,” Tobi shouted in my ear, as I held onto her waist and we grinded on the dancefloor, upstairs at the Khyber. “Still them, huh?” “Of course. I still don’t care what they say at PAFA, and I don’t care what Trish says either.” Tiny Tob— another brain complicated enough, like John’s, to make your head spin, when up close and personal finally became a reality. She’d moved, as a painter, into a charmed space in which her kaleidoscope eyes fashioned, from street-life among the heavy dykes in Center City, a thematic compromise with the stern formality of the French Neo-Classicists. She managed to work me in as a little fun, on the side. Not that, standing on stage with The Bats, who were playing cat and mouse with the East Coast media at the time, her cherubic face didn’t lead most Philadelphians to think she was just another rock girl. John loved her, too. The neighborhood where Tob had a flat and The Bats had a co-op house in the environs, South Street past Broad, into the mid-to-high Teens (Tob was on 16th), had become a dynasty situation for them. Not a neighborhood with a specific name, adjunct to center-of-the-center, but when lines formed to see them at Tritone, right in the heart of it, John and I knew our place as art geeks in comparison. Tob was a cheater! Once in a while, we got called in by The Bats heavy brass to do roadie duty. “By the way,” I thought fair to mention to her, “I couldn’t find those maracas at 8th Street Music at all. I don’t think they have them.” Tobi made a moue but also giggled, “Don’t ask me, ask Liz.” The song and the grind were about to end, but I knew Tobi would eventually be dispatched up to Logan Square for a few nights, and she was. John and I got paid back for our consummate skill lugging gear around with what amounted to, each time, about a joint worth of dope each. Fair. With us, Liz was happy to fire up the Bukka White and subject us to a rigmarole, two heavy dykes and two pretty bis, that had to do with demonstrating the right kind of devotion, so that The Bats at the Highwire Gallery could feel comfortable that they were not demeaning themselves there. It was useless at the house to talk to anyone but Liz. She’d look at you and make her appraisal for the evening: “Oh, it’s you guys. Alright, you both wait here and I’ll come back and show you where the gear is.” Liz, with the red, lank mop, fulfilled her quotient of the redhead’s notorious bloody-mindedness: “These two amps, set by the door for now. Don’t touch the instruments ‘til they’re packed the right way. The keyboard, Tob is going to do for herself tonight.” Might I say, with some embarrassment, that the portion of the dope we then received went right into our lungs. So that, gear lugged to a station wagon which only had to drive a yet-crucial few blocks, we all wound up at Tritone, to watch Tob and Liz go into Mick-and-Keith mode and leave John and I in the dust again. All in good fun. But the last thing I asked Tob on the Khyber upstairs dancefloor was to the point: “Are you gonna try to show this time?” Tob’s eyes rolled up to the not particularly lofty ceiling, as the song began to fade and I relaxed my grasp on her waist. She collected herself, and said “Yeah. But I have to wait for all the other stuff to settle down. And no one’s gonna rush me, either.” I told John what she said, and he laughed all over again. This time, he wouldn’t tell me why. The inscrutable bisexual brain: it is what it is. 

 Adam Fieled © 2023